Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
That is to say: the negative connotations being noted generally refer to the situation where the object of discussion may be offended by not being referred to as the appropriate gender. Where such offense is not anticipated the connotations are much less likely to be read into the text.
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I think the negative connotation of of "it" is "less then a person" which is why "it" is okay for a dog, but when you use it for a person, not so much.
As I said, if early on the reason for "it" was given, I think it would be fine. I think that is true no matter what pronoun he uses. He came up with a situation that does not fit modern language, so he will have to do some setup to explain the language usage early in the book. Might be as simple as a character correcting a child that uses "he" (which I assume for now animals still have gender, so he could still be a valid word) for a person when that child should use "it." Without reading any of the story its hard to guess what would work best.
